Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea – Part 1: The Iliad

 

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea – Part 1: The Iliad

            There is no biographical or literary evidence to suggest that Homer was ever a seafarer, but his knowledge of all things nautical can certainly lead one to make that assumption. We are talking about a knowledge that goes beyond not calling the bow of a ship the ‘pointy end’ or the stern the ‘roundy end’. Just read his descriptions about how the crew boarded a ship, took their places on the benches, seized the oars and began to row, or the tactics that Odysseus used to sail by and escape the fatal rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. You will soon come to the realization that this is a man who has spent considerable time sailing the wine-dark sea and he knows what he is talking about. I daresay you could have thrown him a rope and he would have easily tied a bowline, a reef knot, or a clove hitch and tossed it back to you.

            The Iliad and the Odyssey are both rich with nautical references, as one might expect from stories that are based near the sea or on it. Ships are symbolic of power in the Iliad and they are the means for Odysseus to achieve his Νόστος, or homecoming, the essential theme of the Odyssey. As such, these nautical references are not merely descriptive, but are essential elements for fleshing out the central themes, characters and stories of the two epics. Much of the action takes place either on the sea or near it and it is the sea itself which often provides the mood for this action or how it unfolds. A priest mulls things over in his mind along the shore of the tumultuous sea: ‘the old priest obeyed, and being fearful walked in silence along the shore of the thundering sea.’  Armies roll like waves across the battlefield: ‘they again rushed with a great noise to the assembly from their ships and tents, just like when the waves of the thundering sea roar onto the great shore and the sea crashes loudly.’ The sea is everywhere in Homer’s narratives.

            Homer uses various terms throughout both epics to describe ships and their construction. Most often he refers to the swift ships of the Achaeans and from this we can gather that the ships were light and manoeuvrable and made of wood. He does talk about bronze-armoured ships, but most scholars believe he is referring to the weaponry of the soldiers rather than the ships themselves. The trireme carried a bronze ramming prow but such ships predated the time of the Trojan War. Homer often refers to ships being dark or black or having black hulls and this stemmed from the practice of coating ships in tar for the purposes of waterproofing. Ships were described as hollow, curved, well-benched and double-oared. It is generally believed that this meant that the deck was open and that the hull and gunwale were curved. There would have been a row or two of benches along the deck down each side of the ship manned by rowers. Smaller ships may have had as few as 20 oarsmen, whereas the penteconter, a standard vessel in Homer’s time, was about 90 feet long and had two rows of oarsmen on each side with 50 rowers in total. We learn from the Odyssey that Odysseus’s ship had a crew of almost 60 men. We get an idea of the size of a ship from one of Homer’s comments.

But Aias no longer stood fast, for he was being constrained by missiles and, foreboding death, he gave a little ground along the seven foot bridge and left the deck of the well-shaped ship.

Ships also carried sails as well as oars and when the crew reached land, the ship was anchored if the journey was to be continued or if the trip was over, it was dragged ashore and placed on props.

And when they arrived in the deep harbour, they furled their sails and stowed them in the black ship. At once they lowered the mast by the shrouds, placed it in the mast-holder and with oars drew the ship forward to the mooring. They dropped anchor, fastened the cables and then went ashore.

They raised the mast and set out the white sails. The wind filled the middle sail and the heaving seas churned greatly around the keel sending the ship forward as it plowed through the waves. When they arrived at the array of the army of the Achaeans, they dragged the black ship onto the shore and high up upon the sandy beach, laying props beneath it.

The soldiers rushed to the ships with a great shout. The dust rose up beneath their feet and they exhorted one another to lay hold of the ships and to drag them into the divine sea. They cleared out the mooring basins and removed the props from beneath the hulls as the great sound of them rushing towards home rose to the heavens.

            The catalogue of the ships in Book II of the Iliad gives us details of all the 1186 ships that sailed for Troy from the Greek mainland and the islands. It looks like Helen’s face launched more than a thousand ships. Homer describes all of them as swift, seafaring, curved, dark, hollow, double-oared, well-benched, or high-sterned, or in the case of the ships of Odysseus, bearing red prows. Homer tells us the origin of the ships, the number aboard and the names of the leaders of each city or regional contingent. He includes an interesting note about the combatants from Arcadia, a mountainous region in the centre of the Peloponnesian Peninsula that is far from the sea.

Agamemnon son of Atreus, the leader of men, provided them with the well-benched ships in which they crossed the wine dark sea, for they were not a people who knew very much about seafaring.

            Homer reported the death of Phereclus who was a highly skillful shipbuilder. In Greek mythology he is credited with having built the ship that Alexander (Paris) used to kidnap Helen and take her to Troy.

But Meriones killed Phereclus the son of Tecton, son of Harmon, a skillful artisan who knew how to fashion all things with his hands, for Pallas Athena loved him greatly. He built a number of similar ships for Alexander, sources of ill and great evils for himself and for the Trojans, since he was not aware of the fate which the gods had in store for them.

            All of the Greek ships were drawn up along the shore and their encampment was in front of them on the sands. Their biggest fear was that the Trojans would attack the camp and set their ships on fire. Without their ships, they would never be able to return home after the war was over. They devised a means to protect the ships: ‘the long-haired Achaeans have erected a wall in front of their ships and have dug a ditch around it.’ But Hector dismissed what he thought were their feeble efforts to defend the ships and he would have succeeded in setting them afire, were it not for divine intervention.

Mere children have built these weak walls and they are not worthy of notice. They will not hold back my force and our horses will easily leap over this ditch they have dug. Then when I am at their hollow ships, they will remember only hostile fire. I will torch their ships with fire and slay the Argives beside their ships, bewildered and overcome with smoke and fire.

            Achilles was bound and determined that he would no longer take part in the war because of the outrage that he felt, having been deprived of Briseis by Agamemnon. He said that he would depart the following day and outlined the route he would take for his voyage home. One wonders how Homer could have got this right if he had never taken the trip himself. Homer seemed to know a lot about maritime geography.

Now I am not prepared to wage battle with godlike Hector but tomorrow I will offer sacrifice to Zeus and all the other gods and I will heap up my ships with bounty. When I have launched them on the sea, you will notice if you wish to look and do so, my ships sailing along the salty Hellespont full of men eagerly rowing. If the renowned earth-shaker grants me a good voyage, then on the third day I will arrive at Pythia with its fertile soil.

There is a wide grotto in the depths of the deep sea between Tenedos and rugged Imbros.

So he spoke and storm-footed Iris rushed to deliver his message and halfway between Samos and rugged Imbros she dove into the dark sea and the pool of water rushed over her.

You have fallen here Otrynteus and such is your death, but your family lives on by the waters of Gygaea where your father has his domain, by Hyllos that is abundant in fish and by the eddying waters of Hermos.

And you old man, I understand were at one time blessed, insofar as all the lands to the sea that Lesbos, the seat of Macar encloses and Phrygia in the high places and the boundless Hellespont, that over all these people, men say that you, old man, were the greatest by reason of your wealth and your sons.

            It is not surprising that a land-based tale like the Iliad would have relatively few nautical references in it as compared to the Odyssey story. However, there are enough references to ships and sailing to give us a glimpse of Homer’s understanding of maritime issues and to lead us to believe that he indeed knew his way around when it came to matters of the sea. Though the Trojan War took place several hundred years before the time of Homer, one can envision him standing on the Dardanian shoreline and ticking off on the catalogue on his tablet the Achaean ships and warriors as they arrived. His level of familiarity with the nautical world and his detailed descriptions all point to the fact that Homer was very much at home on the wine-dark sea. What we gain from Homer’s narrative is a broader understanding of the warships of ancient Greece and how they were constructed. From Homer’s catalogue of the ships we can get a better appreciation for the scope and the extent of the army that was gathered to avenge the taking of Helen. Modern archaeology has given greater credence to the theory that the Trojan War was an actual historical event, and if this is indeed the case, then Homer’s account paints us a vivid picture of the forces of the two adversaries. In the Iliad, Homer highlights very strongly a maritime theme and this is accomplished by the author primarily through the record of the Achaean ships that carry the Greek army to Troy and which serve as their lifeline once they are there. The ships, which are mentioned throughout the epic, are a symbol of the Danaan forces, their connection to homelands, and the potential for either triumph or defeat. If they are successful in the war, they will have the ability to return home in glory. If they are defeated and can keep the Trojans from torching the fleet, they will have a means of escape, as ignominious as that might be.

We will continue our study of Homer’s nautical theme in Part 2, as we turn our attention to the Odyssey.